Immortal (The Trelawneys of Williamsburg Book 2)

by Meredith, Anne

  “Marley.”

  Hawk’s voice was gentle, husky with fondness.

  She glanced back, noticing his smile fade as he looked at her. She bit her lip, trying to fight down the emotion in her as he walked back to her, even as the rest of their party began running toward the large group of men and women gathered in the snowy expanse above the river. Those men and women, too, were running toward them.

  She could not explain the terrible fear and foreboding that filled her. The researcher she was had no scientific data to corroborate her awful suspicion. And yet, as tears ran down her face, she feared that she had at last discovered the identity of the Lost Sea Captain.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Marley collected herself as she turned to Bronson. “Forgive me. I think I’m just tired.”

  He drew her cloak more tightly about her. “Shall I carry you? The snow is deep across this meadow, and your shoes, entirely silly.”

  She gave a choked laugh. “I can walk, thank you.”

  “That may be true, but I cannot feel your curves against me while you walk.”

  He hugged her close, brushing his fingertips gently over her wet cheeks—his eyes, those eyes that laughed so often, serious as he watched her. Holding hands, they hurried across the blindingly bright field. The snow was melting into a mire, but the field was thick with vegetation, so it wasn’t bad.

  Camisha and Ashanti were already across, greeting the people there. Shouts of laughter and soft cries of joy rang across the meadow as they followed Parks and Ray, who carried his nephew on his shoulders.

  By the time they arrived at the gathering place, everyone had already moved on and was already hurrying through the woods, chattering loudly all the way. Camisha was the belle of the ball, mobbed by every woman there. The men welcomed Ashanti, and mugs went around to toast their arrival. The clearing between the cabins was wide, and Marley was certain the Trelawneys socialized here. Shaded with ancient live oak overhead, it would be sheltered from the summer sun. A thick covering of pine needles covered the ground, preventing the snow and rain from turning the place into a giant mud pit.

  The intoxicating aroma of meat smoking filled the air, and she saw a slow cloud of blue-gray smoke rising from a windowless, stone smokehouse near the end of the cabins.

  So these were the Trelawneys of Williamsburg, Marley thought, surveying the crowd. What a striking group to exist at this point in time. An excitement hummed along the surface of her skin—she would know the people she’d read about in their earliest journal.

  And in a moment, she knew the worst shame of her career. How her family had hoarded the treasure of this family’s tragedy and glory. What if she never made it back to her time? Trapped in the trunk of her car, the priceless antiquity would be lost. She imagined the car towed from the hotel parking lot, left to decay in a junkyard.

  Her grandmother keeping it was bad enough, but Marley was a historian. She knew well that the journals deserved to be shared with the world, that stories like those of the Trelawneys could go a long way in healing the strife that would persist three centuries from now.

  The dense trees cleared, and before her Marley saw a small village of sorts. Dozens of people—women, children, and a few old men—milled. Perhaps a dozen or more modest cabins stood there. They looked much more substantial than reproductions Marley had seen of slave cabins. Another large area had been cleared of trees and there stood three newer houses, with a fourth under construction.

  Behind one of the homes stood a large building that looked like a meeting house.

  These homes were not the stately plantation mansions that lined the James River, but more modest homes of equally handsome construction and design—if lacking in luxurious embellishments. By the standards of the “shacks” Helen had derided, however, they might well be mansions. Each home was perhaps five times as large as one of the cabins.

  “Bronson Trelawney, you stinking old sea dog!”

  The man who arrived was slender and rugged, wearing the simple homespun clothing of a farmhand. His eyes were wide and alert, lit with intelligence and humor, and he grinned broadly as Bronson’s gaze rested on him.

  “Martin Trelawney, you rotten old landlubber.”

  The men grabbed each other in a quick hug. “Call me a farmer, if you must, but a landlubber I am not.”

  “Indeed? Then will you be joining us on our next journey?”

  “I’ve discussed it with my father, and …”

  Bronson laughed. “I see. He admires your ambition, but he needs a field hand more.”

  “He simply needs more persuading. All of my brothers are married now, and their hands are full with their own families.”

  “Even Hasty?”

  “Little Dan, Joe, even Hasty. Pretty little wives, all three of them, and a whole wagon full of children.” He smiled at Marley. “Speaking of pretty little wives…”

  Marley blushed at his assumption, and Bronson gave a hearty laugh. “No, not quite. This is Marley, and yes, dear to me. So you look out for her, when I’m not around.”

  He cast Bronson a roguish smile. “Brother, where this lovely lady is concerned, you’d best look out for me, when you’re not around.”

  Even as they laughed at their own foolishness, Camisha appeared out of nowhere. “There’s my godson Martin,” she said as she approached. “Where’ve you been? I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

  He accepted her hard hug. “Ah, Mother Camisha, what joy to see you!”

  She leaned back, inspecting his face. “You look thinner. Older. Are you not eating properly?”

  “I’m eating too much. I’m twenty-three now, you know.”

  She nodded. “Believe me, sweetheart, I know. I mark your birthday every year.”

  His gaze on her grew tender. “Well, I no longer do. Instead, I mark my day of freedom every year, and I give thanks to God for you.”

  Once more she gave him an emotional hug. “Have you seen Boots?”

  “Oh, he’s working. He does his studies in the night, and works long days.”

  “But the season is over! What could he be working on now? Didn’t he know we were coming?”

  “Work is never finished on a tobacco farm. He’s a grown man, you know Father makes sure we all pull our weight. I think he’s patching the curing barns. Shall I fetch him?”

  “No, no, I’ll see him at supper. Marley, why don’t you come with me. There’s someone I’d like for you to meet.”

  Marley glanced back at Hawk, surprised to find his gaze intent on her, a smile playing about his mouth.

  “All right, all right, there’ll be plenty of time for that later.” Camisha grabbed her hand, dragging her off unceremoniously. “Marley, I know that boy’s handsome as sin, but don’t you let him take advantage of you. God knows I’d be tempted.”

  Marley laughed. “I won’t, but thank you for keeping an eye on me.”

  They reached the edge of a giant, roaring fire the men had built in a pit, where several women were rocking in chairs, cloaks and shawls drawn about them, laughing and enjoying the sunshine.

  “Ruth, this is my friend, Marley. Marley, this is Ruth Freeman Trelawney. We’ve known each other for nearly thirty years now, and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her. You were just speaking with one of her youngest sons, Martin.”

  Marley gaped like a star-struck teenager. Camisha might have introduced her to Abigail Adams, except that Marley knew this woman better, and admired her even more. She was at a loss for a second, until she curtsied. Three cheers for Colonial Williamsburg training, there.

  Ruth—as she should’ve expected—waved a dismissive hand at her. “What’re you doing curtsying to me, child?

  “I’m just so pleased to meet you.”

  “I’m just a plain old grandmother and schoolmistress. Nothing to go a-curtsying over.” She rose from her rocker and reached out to hug Marley. “Welcome to our home. Would you like some coffee? Rum? Let’s go inside for refreshments.”
/>   Camisha followed. “Don’t tell me you’re out of blackberry wine.”

  Ruth laughed. “Not in this life.”

  The women walked inside a cabin, and Ruth stuck her head out to call one of the young boys playing in the snow. “Sammy, take this here crate of mugs out to the fire. Then you pass them out to everyone, and tell them libation’s on the way. Then check with Little Dan and make sure it is.”

  “Yes’m,” said the boy, perhaps eight or nine years old. He hoisted the wooden box and ran through the door.

  Ruth closed the door behind him, reaching into the firebox and feeding the wood stove in the corner.

  “What’ll you have, young lady?”

  “I’d love to try that blackberry wine.”

  “Excellent choice,” Camisha said with her eyebrows raised, to which she and Ruth tittered.

  “It sure enough is,” Ruth said, uncorking a bottle. She poured three mugs. “Camisha and I have spent years testing it to make sure.”

  She handed the other mugs to her guests, then took the last and gestured toward the chairs before the stove. “Older I get, the less I love snow,” she said, bringing the bottle along for company.

  They sat in a cozy semicircle beside the warmth of the stove, and Marley tasted the wine, pleasantly surprised at the smooth, mellow flavor.

  Ruth sipped her wine and looked at Marley. “You going with us, tonight?”

  She glanced at Camisha, who was shaking her head. “I don’t know, Ruth. It’s intense. It’s dangerous.”

  “’Tis also the mightiest feeling I ever did have. Oughta let the little girl go along.”

  “I’m happy to go where I can help. Where are we going?”

  Camisha raised her hand. “Just let me think about it some more. Let’s enjoy our wine first. Have you been fattening plenty of turkeys?”

  Then the two women were off into a discussion of preparation for the Thanksgiving meal. Marley found her attention wandering, and then she noticed it, near the front window: a tiny desk, with a quill and powdered ink.

  And the same ledger Marley had grown so fond of during her life.

  Without thinking, she rose and moved silently to the desk, reaching for the ledger.

  “Marley? You need some more wine, honey?” This from Camisha.

  “No, I just wondered … Are you a writer?” she asked, to explain her unseemly curiosity over the journal.

  “Well, if writing things down for 30 years makes a person a writer, I guess I am. Camisha tells me I’m a di-a-rist,” Ruth said, with self-deprecating humor, bobbing her head.

  “Oh?”

  “I just write down what happens around the Trelawney plantation, and in our families. I don’t know if I could make up a story if I had to. But I sure do love reading stories, when I can get my hands on them. And I always need books for my students.”

  Marley thought of Bronson’s library, back on the ship. She knew he loved the books, but perhaps …

  “Do you teach all the children on the plantation?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do. Camisha has helped fill in some of the blanks for me over the years, and I do have some books. The hardest part right now for me is when the children outgrow me. There’s no place they can go for more education. But Marley, let me tell you this. My children—I mean the children in my school—leave my school with a better education than some poor white folk. Best any of us can do is do the best we can do.”

  Marley smiled at her straightforward optimism.

  A sudden knock came at the door, and Bronson filled the doorway. “Did anyone want to go to Williamsburg with me to say hello to my father?”

  Camisha gave him a long look. “Will we be back tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  Camisha, Ashanti, Bronson, Rashall, and Marley went. They borrowed a carriage from the plantation and set out in the mid-afternoon, and were soon in Williamsburg. Marley blinked at how similar the old village was to the place where she would work in another 240 years. All the history that had yet to take place—independence, the trek across the frontier, the Civil War and all its battles, the Depression, and all the many painful struggles blacks had yet to endure in the fight for equality. And yet someday, this place would look almost identical to its appearance today.

  The melting snow turned Duke of Gloucester Street into a sludgy mire, and Marley noticed black festooning the windows and door.

  “Peyton Randolph has died,” she said.

  Her gaze casually passed to Bronson, whose mouth parted in surprise—almost fear. “Just because there’s a death at the home need not mean Mr. Randolph was its victim.”

  What a foolish outburst—what had she been thinking? He had indeed died, she was certain of it, while at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Any American historian knew this fact well; he had, until then, been considered the prime contender to be the country’s first president. Some argued that he had in fact served as the first president.

  They directed the driver to stop around the corner from the Trelawney home. Bronson led the way, his arm on Marley’s as they approached the front door of the Trelawney home.

  Bronson opened the door quietly, and Marley, just behind him, peered around his shoulder. A chair facing away from them stood before the fireplace, and in it, she saw the back of a gentleman with thick, white hair.

  In his lap was a woman, and they were locked in a passionate embrace.

  “Oh, Father!”

  Bronson’s voice rang with amused disapproval, as if the older man were a child himself, a badly spoiled one.

  The man started with a none-too-eloquent “Oh—well!” The woman scrambled off his lap, straightening her skirts as she rose, and Marley blushed. Exactly what had they interrupted?

  Bronson reached to light an oil lamp nearby, and then another, and Marley gasped when the woman turned to look at them, at last composed. She blinked more than once, then peered closely at the lady.

  It was none other than her own grandmother—Nan.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Camisha and Ashanti laughed softly at the awkwardness. By all indications, Ray’s tight-lipped smile reined in a sailor’s quip. Bronson ignored it all, walking in and hugging his father.

  “I do indeed regret interrupting you, but at least you’ve answered my question about how you’re feeling.”

  Marley, without an invitation, rushed to her grandmother, whose face paled as she beheld her granddaughter.

  “Marley,” she cried out, surprised, and the women embraced. “I didn’t know what had become of you!”

  “This must be the mythical Nan you’ve mentioned. I had no idea you were acquainted with my family.” Bronson came to stand behind her. He bowed low, grasping Nan’s hand and lightly kissing it. “Bronson Trelawney, at your service. Marley, this is my father, Thomas Trelawney. Father, this is Marley—good heavens, Marley what?”

  “Hastings,” she replied, smiling. “Have we never been properly introduced?”

  “Hastings? Then you must be kin to Godfrey Hastings,” She knew enough of Thomas Trelawney that she placed him in his mid-seventies, but he had the energy and vigor of a young man.

  At the reminder of the man Ruth had referenced in her diary, Marley began, “I think perhaps it’s only a coinci—”

  “Godfrey Hastings is your great-grandfather, dear,” Nan said. “You have yet to meet him. Would anyone like coffee?”

  Marley’s sudden silence came less from surprise than embarrassment at her grandmother’s lying. She had come to know her prevarication while growing up, and had come to despise dishonesty as a result. She herself often had that feeling that she didn’t quite know the whole story on almost anything, and she wondered if her grandmother had some kind of disorder. She didn’t seem to even have a good reason for lying, if there was such a thing.

  But this was too much, and she was lying to people Marley had come to love. It was impossible for her to have such a close relationship with a man known in the eighteenth century. She t
urned to the Adamses, who moved forward into the room and closed the door behind them. Then Camisha got a good look at Nan, with a recognition that stunned Marley.

  “Hannah?” she whispered.

  The fear that Marley had first known when she realized she truly had traveled in time returned. How had her grandmother done so, as well? And how did she know Camisha? The scientist within her simply refused to accept any of it—although neither could she dispute the physical evidence before her.

  Nan moved forward, closer to the lamp, so she could see the others better.

  Then life itself became inexplicable.

  In the brighter light of the lamp, Marley could see that her grandmother looked twenty years younger—perhaps not even fifty, rather than well into her sixties. And her own face pinkened in embarrassment. She did not appear to be nearly old enough to be Marley’s grandmother. Suddenly, the truth itself seemed a lie.

  And these two women somehow knew each other. Camisha reached out to her, and Nan drew her close.

  “I thought I’d never see you again! Where in the world have you been?” Camisha asked, holding her at arm’s length. “You look so good!”

  “And look how your handsome young man has grown up! Where are all the rest—your beautiful young girls, your other boys? They looked just like you.”

  Marley looked on as they inexplicably caught up. Bronson returned to stand behind her, and she unconsciously leaned against him for warmth, for stability against this insanity.

  And only then, comforted at his nearness, absorbing his strength, did she notice that her grandmother had never answered Camisha’s question.

  The women went to the kitchen to make coffee, and Nan asked if they were staying for dinner.

  “We can’t stay long, I’m afraid,” Camisha said. “They’ll be holding supper for us at Rosalie. But we do need to talk, just the three of us.”